I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund

Rather that donate for vague legal expenses, I like to see him state who will represent him. If the EFF or ACLU I'd be more inclinded to want to help.

I guess what I'm wanting to say is use entities already established in handling such cases. A lawyer is someone charging hundreds of dollars per hour regardless of his track record or specialized experience.

Or tell us the Law Firm and we can see if they are up to the task of taking cases challenging the US.

What happens to your customer's e-mails and data?
Levison: I'm looking into setting up a site where users can download their data and set up a forwarding [e-mail] address, but that may take a week or two to set up. That's all I can do until I feel confident that I can resume the service without having to compromise its integrity.

Having lost my Lavabit account, I'm looking for another email service that's private with no ads or trackers--and hopefully run by someone with Levison's integrity. I remembered a thread on the Puppy forum where I learned about Lavabit in the first place, but I can't find it now. I found this on the Opera forums and post it here in case it's useful. Anyone have experience with these, or other mail services you recommend?
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1696432

Quote:

In view of the recent news about the US's snooping system PRISM: where does this leave MyOpera Mail, if its servers are located in New York? Does this mean that everything that is sent through MyOpera ends up with the NSA in Utah, just like all the mail via Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, AOL etc.? [later post] As things stand at present, the best option for those who are very concerned about their e-mail privacy seems to be Runbox (www.runbox.com), which is a very decent and sympathetic service (their customer support is excellent) but costs a little. If one wants a free-of-cost service in one of the safer European countries, there are GMX (http://www.gmx.net) and Web.de (http://web.de) and Mail.de (http://www.mail.de) in Germany and Free.fr (http://imp.free.fr or http://zimbra.free.fr) in France.

Yandex (http://mail.yandex.com) is of course from [Russia]

Last edited by Wognath on Sat 10 Aug 2013, 22:50; edited 1 time in total

I'm quite insignificant! In my case, desire for privacy is not a matter of fear or necessity (NSA please note), just principle.
Even the ads in gmail based on the content of my email are harmless, but exceedingly creepy.

Same boat here (former Lavabit user; I really don't need to hide anything, but I want to do my part towards forcing the government to realize that doesn't mean they're free to look).

NOTE! I would NOT consider France one of the safer countries-there was a recent disclosure that they had something similar going on.
So:
Not the US, UK, Canada, or France
Probably not NZ (if they went along about Dotcom, how can you expect your mail to stay safe?)
Russia: may well spy but wouldn't expect much cooperation with the US.
Switzerland: probably best bet; has (had?) 6-month metadata logging requirement.
Feel free to add more.

No way is Dotcom safe in NZ unless he runs for the Auckland mayoralty and goes on to win the vote of the people.

Our prime minister is a great believer in a fiscal hierarchy that cares nothing for the sovereignty of the ordinary person (just like the governments of most countries). He hates Dotcom and is committed to handing him over to the global financial mafia.

He is currently passing a law that allows our "security" agencies to spy on all communications of all NZ citizens. He is foolish enough (and brown-nosed enough) to trust that his international masters will treat the gathered data in the best interests of the NZ people. Bah! humbug. What rubbish!

(edited to remove what was probably an offensive comment. I shouldnt have been quite so forthright about our prime ministers background. sorry for any offense caused originally)

Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder For Shutting Down His Service
The saga of Lavabit founder Ladar Levison is getting even more ridiculous, as he explains that the government has threatened him with criminal charges for his decision to shut down the business, rather than agree to some mysterious court order.

Quote:

... a source familiar with the matter told NBC News that James Trump, a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., sent an email to Levison's lawyer last Thursday – the day Lavabit was shuttered -- stating that Levison may have "violated the court order," a statement that was interpreted as a possible threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.

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